15:29 by FoxTwo
Plurk And Twitter, Which Is Better?
Wow it's been a WEEK since I last wrote an entry here. This is my longest "haitus", so far, on my blog since 2005. Sorry guys, Real Life (tm) happened.
To get right to it - recently Twitter had some problems. People who used Twitter heavily were badly affected (withdrawal symptoms, hiak hiak!). For me it was little more than an annoyance that twitter was down.
Then, when Twitter came up in spurts a little later, uniquefrequency from ping.sg had a tweet - he'd found a good replacement to Twitter called Plurk. Since Twitter was, at the time, not stable, I thought I may as well check it out.
First thing that hits you after you sign up on Plurk - the timeline. It's sideways scrolling so it will definitely take some getting used to. Within a few hours of signing up, I had 18 to 20 friends on Plurk and ALL of them are pingsters.
Secondly, replies in Plurk are threaded, like in forums. A little to structured for my liking. When someone replies to a friend's plurk, you get notified, and you have to go hunting for a plurk that might be a few hours old just to see the reply. That means alot of backtracking (and sideways scrolling if you don't click on the "view responses" link at the bottom of your screen).
In any case, this post isn't a "review" on Plurk. It's more like my opinion on which service is "better", in my own context. The initial push to check out Plurk was that Twitter was down. I was impressed that Plurk supports more than just GoogleTalk as the IM of choice. You can choose between the popular ones on Plurk - MSN, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, Jabber, and AIM. All major protocols are covered. Personally, since I use Digsby, it didn't really matter which I chose. The fact that MSN was unavailable in Plurk at the time didn't really bother me much too, even though I would have really preferred to have an MSN IM bot.
However, a couple of days later, the IM bots disappeared. They were offline all the time. This seems eerily the same problem that Twitter had - IM went down. The bots aren't up yet, even today.
When the IM bots went down, Plurk suddenly had none of the perks (to me) to use it over Twitter. No 3rd party clients, no IM, and Plurk definitely doesn't have SMS support. To be "updated", I had to keep the webpage open again, which I hate. Intensely.
Twitter also has the advantage of being "mainstream", so more people use it over Plurk. This is only natural since it's more established. That also means that integration with some other services like Facebook, Mybloglog et al, is already available. Plurk is just a new kid on the block and it will definitely take time for people to come use it, let alone be integrated. Even so it may never overtake Twitter, just like Jaiku and Pownce hasn't, even though they may have been around for almost as long as Twitter has.
If I were to move to a new platform, let alone just to Plurk, I'd have to persuade my friends to do so too. I don't like doing that, since my friends will have their own personal opinions on what they like and do not like. I can gush and enthuse about how great something is (like Digsby), but it's really up to them to take the plunge.
So what's my take?
I have Twitter up all the time on Digsby anyway, so I guess my answer would be - Twitter for me. Plurk is a nice distraction, and I'll still pop in occasionally, but it won't be my "main", so to speak. Also, Twitter isn't "down" now anyway. It works fine, it's up, so no complaints from me.
Labels: internet, plurk, twitter
